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I Don’t Know if I Should Laugh or Cry

When I look at myself in the mirror, I definitely see an older me. I haven’t resorted to plastic surgery yet, even though my neck is reaching my chest and my chest is reaching my knees.

Despite all that, I don’t consider myself as elderly. Now that I may be entering my golden years, I consider elderly as someone who just vegetates. Yes, there are many days that I love to lie in bed and watch TV, but that is nothing new. I have been doing that all my life.

I was somewhat shocked, but not totally insulted, when I read Venture Beat this morning to learn about a new cell phone for the elderly by a company called Fujitsu. Target market 65. That put me in my place real fast.

So here I am screwing around trying to keep myself relevant with Twitter, Pinterest, Highlight, Foursquare, blogging, and schmogging, and now I am being pitched by a company who says I need a mobile phone that has noise cancellation, larger text, and even speech-slowing for better parsing of fast-talking callers.

I truly get what Fujitsu is trying to do, but I really think they are slightly outdated with their approach. The design of the phone looks like the call button remote attached to the side of a hospital bed and the features are color coded because “we need extra help with technology.”

Here is a link to the story and a picture of the phone. Tell me what you think. Am I over reacting? It wouldn’t be the first time!

2 thoughts on “I Don’t Know if I Should Laugh or Cry”

The design is not great but the concept is, and I hope Apple or Samsung comes out with a phone for those people like my husband who I drag kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He still has a flip phone that does nothing and thinks it’s “the cat’s meow” (now doesn’t that sound ancient)!

There is the Jitterbug I see advertised on TV. It’s the same concept except you have to use their phone service.